How rescue teams use your data
This page explains what happens to the information myJikita holds about you when somebody is actually missing — what a rescue team can see, what they do with it, and why each piece changes the search.
It is written for two readers: the person deciding whether sharing is worth it, and the person who has just had to make a phone call.
The rescue console
Authorised rescue organisations use a separate web application — not this app — to see the information relevant to a search. It is operated by Alpik and used by rescue services, and access to it is controlled.
A rescue team does not browse the population. Access is restricted to authorised rescue organisations, every action is logged against the individual operator who took it, and if a rescue service opens your data you are notified by email — again after 24 hours if the access is still open. The email gives you the contact details of that service's own Data Protection Officer, who can tell you exactly what was done and why.
Searching does not notify you — a search shows only whether you are a user and, if an outing is running, its name, its date, when you are due back and whether you have raised an SOS. Opening your position, your track or anything else does notify you. The full account, and the legal basis, are in Who can see your position.
What changes a search, and why
The last known position
The single most valuable fact. It converts a search area into a search point, and everything else radiates from it.
The arithmetic is unforgiving. A search area grows with the square of its radius: doubling the uncertainty quadruples the ground to cover. A last known position an hour old, for somebody on foot, bounds the problem to a few kilometres of possible travel — and in mountain terrain, far less, because cliffs and rivers do not care how far you could have walked.
Without one, the area is "the massif", and the massif takes days.
The track
Where you have been, not just where you were last.
A track shows direction and intent. Somebody heading steadily up the east flank at 15:00 is a different search from somebody who turned around at 14:00 and is somewhere on the descent. It shows pace, which tells a team whether you were moving well or already struggling. And it shows the last section before contact was lost, which is where the trouble usually is.
Tracks also show terrain choices a map cannot: which of two paths you took at a junction, which side of a stream you crossed on.
The planned route
A line, instead of an area. A line can be flown in one helicopter pass.
If you deviated, the planned route is still valuable — the point where you left it is often the most informative place in the whole dataset.
The expected return time
It bounds the problem in time, which is as useful as bounding it in space. It tells the team how long you have been in difficulty, which feeds directly into how urgently to commit resources and what medical response to prepare.
The activity and the place
Written in plain words by you, at a moment when nothing was wrong. It tells a team what equipment to bring, what hazards apply, and what "normal" looked like for your day — which is the baseline everything else is compared against.
Coverage gaps
Knowing you were in a white area explains your silence without requiring it to mean a catastrophe. It also tells a team where an alert could not have reached them from, which changes how they read the timeline.
Jikita tags
A tag is findable by routes that do not involve your phone at all, and rescue teams have their own equipment for homing in on one. In the final phase of a search — the part where a team is on the ground in the right valley but has not yet found a person — this is often what closes it.
Judging whether somebody needs help
Rescue services have to decide, quickly and with incomplete information, how seriously to take a report and what to commit. The data helps with that judgement, and it helps in both directions.
Signs that raise the urgency:
- An SOS. Somebody deliberately raised the alarm.
- Positions that stop in difficult terrain, rather than on a path or at a refuge.
- A track that goes far off the planned route, especially onto steep ground.
- A tag reporting distress, or a tag that has stopped moving while its owner is overdue.
- Movement that does not fit the activity — very slow progress, or a stop in a place nobody stops.
- Overdue, in deteriorating weather or approaching darkness.
Signs that lower it:
- Positions still arriving, even slowly. Somebody is moving and their phone is alive.
- A gap that coincides exactly with a known white area, when the plan said they would be there at about that time.
- A tag that is still moving.
- Progress consistent with the plan, just slower.
That second list matters. A search that can be stood down quickly, on evidence is a search that does not put a team on a mountain at night for somebody who is having a long lunch. Good data protects rescuers too.
Nothing in myJikita decides whether you need help. It does not score you, flag you as at risk, or alert a rescue service on your behalf. Every decision described on this page is made by people.
What is not available
- There is no continuous feed of every user. Positions exist only for outings that were deliberately started and shared.
- The app does not notify rescue services. An SOS goes to your contacts. A human being decides to call. That is deliberate, and the reasoning is on the SOS page.
- Nothing is retained indefinitely. Retention periods are in the Privacy Policy.
The practical conclusion
Every item on this page was created in about sixty seconds, before anybody left the house, by somebody who had no reason to think they would need it.
That is the whole argument for filling in the plan properly: What a good plan contains.